Why do you do Crossfit? Is it just an hour of movement? Stress relief? Do you want to compete? To lose weight? Get stronger? Or both?

Your “why”, the reason why you have chosen to do Crossfit, should be a personal thing. When you wake up in the morning, your “why” should be the driving force in getting you to the gym…not the scores on the whiteboard. Too often I see people getting sucked into who “won the workout” instead of spending time on self-analysis of their own workout. For example, if you are working on a skill that may slow down your workout time (ie toes to bar), you should be concerned with developing that skill and not scaling to knees to elbows in order to “win the workout”.

Prior to the workout, I like to set expectations of how the workout should go (intensity, duration, skill involved). How did I sleep the night before? How am I feeling in general? How has my nutrition been? Have I been recovering properly? Where are my strengths and weaknesses within the workout? The questions I always ask myself after every workout are: How was my time compared to my goal? (if that was one of my goals at all!) Did I do all the movements with good form? Did I ensure all of my repetitions would have been counted if I was competing?

For those reasons, I’m rarely concerned where I finish in a workout compared to other people. If I had a horrible night’s sleep and the person I’m comparing myself to slept 8 hours, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a better workout than I did. What I will do, is compare my time to people with a similar skill level, to see if my “planning” worked (ie planned rest breaks, pacing strategy). Or, if it is a benchmark workout I’ve already done, I compare my score to my previous to see if I’ve improved.

Being concerned with what other people are doing or not doing should not be your “why”. If you stay focused on your progress, others will follow because they will see you getting better.